At AXPONA 2025 in Schaumburg, Illinois, Roland Hoffman, Director of Product Marketing at Steinway Lyngdorf tackled one of the most misunderstood aspects of high-fidelity audio: room acoustics. Speaking to a room filled with passionate audiophiles, Hoffman flipped the traditional narrative, asserting that speakers are only part of the equation. In fact, he claimed that speakers only account for 30 to 50 percent of the sound you actually hear. The rest? It comes from the room itself.
Stop listening to your room
โYou donโt listen to the speakers, you listen to the room,โ Hoffman explained, urging listeners to rethink their approach to sound reproduction. For years, audiophiles have obsessed over speaker brands, amplifier wattage, and high-end cables, but Hoffman’s message was clear: unless you understand your room and how sound behaves within it, even the finest components can underperform.
There is no perfect room
Hoffman questioned the long held belief that the listener and two speakers should form an equilateral triangle. This configuration is often touted as the golden rule for achieving stereo imaging and soundstage balance. But according to Hoffman, that ideal rarely, if ever, translates to reality. โI have never been in a room that has that perfect triangle. A perfect room does not exist,โ he said, chuckling. Rooms vary wildly in size, shape, furnishing, and construction, making the so-called perfect triangle more theoretical than practical.
No 2 rooms sound the same
Even when speaker manufacturers strive for a linear frequency responseโensuring their speakers output all frequencies evenly across the spectrumโthe reality is that no two rooms will respond to those frequencies in the same way. Hoffman likened speaker output to ripples in water, noting that, โSpeakers radiate sound 360 degrees in all directions, it’s like water waves when you drop a stone. If we could only see those sound waves like the ripples in the water then that would make speaker placement easy.โย
Achievable acoustic goals
One common recommendation for improving sound quality is to pull the speakers far out into the room, away from walls, to minimize boundary interference and early reflections. But Hoffman questioned whether such an arrangement was realistic for most listeners. โSome experts contend you need to move speakers as far out into the room as possible to get optimal sound. But is that possible for most listeners?โ The answer, of course, is no. Aesthetic concerns, space limitations, and lifestyle realities often take precedence over acoustic ideals.
Use sound absorption wisely
Even with optimal placement, you’re still left wrestling with room reflectionsโsound waves bouncing off walls, ceilings, and furnitureโwhich can distort clarity, smear imaging, and color the tonal balance. One way to tame reflections is through sound-absorbing materials, but Hoffman cautioned that these can be a double-edged sword. โYou have to make sure you choose the right one, you canโt just buy any four panels as it could make the sound worse,โ he warned. โFor example, what frequency is the panel tuned to? You have to choose panels that address the specific frequency problems you have.โ He added that most sound absorption products on the market are designed for studios, not for domestic listening rooms, and using the wrong ones might do more harm than good.
Value and pitfalls of DSP
Given how difficult it is to physically alter the acoustic properties of a room, Hoffman emphasized the valueโand pitfallsโof using digital signal processing (DSP) to correct for these imperfections. While DSP can be an incredibly powerful tool for taming room issues, Hoffman was clear that it must be implemented with nuance and care. โThe goal of a DSP should not be to achieve a linear frequency response, unless you live in an anechoic chamber. It should also not be forced on every loudspeaker as it can lower the sound energy because linear is not how we perceive sound. Sound in a room is far more complex,โ he explained.
RoomPerfect measures the entire room
It is this philosophy that underpins Steinway Lyngdorfโs own DSP platform, RoomPerfect. Unlike many correction systems that rely on a quick 20-second frequency sweep, RoomPerfect conducts a comprehensive, 20-minute measurement of the entire room. This longer process enables the system to build a much richer and more accurate map of the room’s acoustics. The result is a DSP correction that not only adjusts for speaker characteristics but also compensates intelligently for the unique and often problematic traits of the room itself.
By gathering data from multiple positionsโnot just the listenerโs main seatโRoomPerfect identifies a holistic acoustic profile and then works to optimize the sound throughout the room. This approach is especially important for those who donโt have the luxury of creating a dedicated, perfectly symmetrical listening space.ย
Balance and experimentation
Ultimately, Hoffmanโs message to audiophiles was one of balance and experimentation. The road to better sound doesnโt lie solely in purchasing more expensive gear or chasing an idealized setup. Instead, itโs about learning how your room behaves, trying different speaker and listener positions, applying โa sensible amount of sound absorption,โ and using room correction technology judiciously. โA DSP can really do some magic and does so invisibly,โ he concluded.
Hoffman’s presenation was a strong reminder that the pursuit of audio nirvana isnโt just about the gear you buyโitโs about understanding the space you live in and learning how to make it sing.
